AUDIO FOR BROADCAST Broadcast Boom
Calrec 40-fader Artemis Light desks
feature in the control galleries of the three main studios at BT Sport’s new home
New studio and OB facilities continue to be built, with no sign of economics or market saturation slowing them down. Behind the design, high-tech visual and HD/3D/4K production values, audio is playing a vital role in making sure everything gets to where it should be, as KEVIN HILTON reports.
NEW STUDIOS and OB trucks usually have one big design or technological selling point that can obscure everything else. In both cases, high-definition pictures with 5.1 surround sound and digital audio consoles have been highlights over the past decade. On an infrastructure level, 3G is becoming the norm but, particularly in the OB market, this is seen as a means to offer 3D, with 4k for Ultra HD production lurking in the background. For both, bigger is better as expanding side vehicles and four-wall spaces are built to accommodate larger, more intricate programmes. Behind this are implementations of
technology that are making installations easier and quicker with, as always, an eye on budgets. This is happening particularly in the audio department, where new approaches to signal routing and connectivity are being taken to reduce both costs and the amount of rack equipment needed. BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC
S&PP) took this approach for its new sound galleries at Elstree Studios, where it is based while Television Centre (TVC) is being redeveloped. The audio area for Studio D at Elstree has been enlarged and refurbished, while control rooms have been built for sound stages at nearby Elstree Film Studios (EFS). A great deal of equipment has been
transferred from TVC, including Studer Vista 8 and OnAir 3000 consoles. The installations in the sound galleries of Studio D and the
4 August 2013
George Lucas Stages at EFS are “almost identical”, according to Danny Popkin, BBC S&PP’s Technical Development Manager. Instead of an AES router, all studio inputs and outputs are routed through the OnAir 3000 using MADI over fibre. Sound Supervisor Andy Tapley explains that this is a move away from connecting the gallery and studio with copper lines. Five wall boxes have been installed for multiple connections. The sound control room is able to accommodate up to 240 mic circuits and can be
“We’re particularly seeing Ravenna being used to send large chunks of audio on low- cost Cat5.”
Wayland Twiston Davies
adjusted to suit individual production requirements. “We can take multiple feeds,” Tapley observes. “The days of running single cables are long gone.” Popkin adds that this new approach means there only has to be three audio bays in each control area. “These days there’s more Cat5 cable than audio cable.” The continuing growth of Cat5 is confirmed
by Wayland Twiston Davies, OB specialist with Sony Professional’s systems integration division. “There’s a lot of fibre being used because it’s relatively inexpensive to break out
from. Coachbuilders are used to putting in large amounts of cable but these days we’re reducing how much is put in.” Twiston Davies comments that audio over
IP (AoIP) is becoming “more significant”, while another trend is the closer integration of sound and vision. “We’re particularly seeing Ravenna being used to send large chunks of audio on low-cost Cat5,” he says. He adds that another part of this new approach is the increased availability and affordability of digital consoles over the past five years, to the point where they are the standard for new builds. “We’ve seen the control surface become separate from the mix engine, which means I/Os can be separate as well,” he observes. “An advantage is that you can have a stage box nearer the mics and mic amps, giving a better signal-to-noise ratio. It also means there is less wiring to the console itself. What clients are asking for is a lot more I/O than before. In the bigger trucks we’re seeing systems like VSM [virtual studio manager] being used to control the various ins and outs.” The major desk manufacturers have embraced this methodology, either, in the case of companies like Stagetec, starting at the matrix end and working backwards to the controller; or, as with Calrec Audio, extending their technology from the mixer into networking and routing. Calrec now produces the Hydra2 networking system as well as a range of digital desks.
Broadcast Audio – An International Buyers Guide 2013
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